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February 2, 2009
The job market may be tough, but there's one major employer looking to hire - the government.
And unless there's a major shift in pay and benefits those new government jobs look sweet when compared to the average private sector job.
The economic stimulus package being crafted in Congress could lead to a big increase in state and local government jobs.
A check of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics database shows there were 15,900 government jobs in the Kingsport-Bristol TN-VA Metropolitan Statistical District at the end of 2008.
The breakdown is:
- Local government - 12,600
- State government - 2,300
- Federal government - 1,200
During 2008 there was an increase of 100 government jobs in local government, but the state and federal government jobs were listed as the same levels as 2007.
And according to the BLS's most recent Employer Cost for Employee Compensation Summary there's a difference between public and private when salary and benefits are the focus. The data are averages for employees eligible for full benifits.
Private industry employer compensation costs averaged $27.07 per hour worked during the Sept. reporting period. The wages and salaries for those private sector workers averaged $19.14 per hour.
Government employers spend an average of $13.41 benefits for every hour worked while private sector employers spend an average of $7.93 for their employee benefits.
State and local government employer costs for health benefits were higher ($4.21) than private industry ($1.93).
And retirement and savings costs, which includes both defined benefit and defined contribution plans, were also higher for state and local government employers ($3.09) than private employers ($0.97).
In other words:
- The average hourly pay for a government employee is 34.6 percent higher than the average wage of a private sector worker.
- The average spent on a government employee's benefits package per hour is 69 percent higher than the average cost of a private sector workers' benefit package.
- The average cost per hour for government worker's health benefits is 219 percent more than what is paid for a private sector worker's health benefits.
- A government worker's average retirement benefit per hour is 319 percent higher than the hourly cost of a private sector worker's retirement benefit.
Last month, the White House said a $600 billion economic stimulus package would lead to 244,000 government jobs at a time when thousands of private sector jobs are getting slashed.
Even some conservative economists say the government hiring is a good thing.
Kevin Hassett, the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, calls the federal government "a built-in stabilizer."
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